A year ago, I had a decision to make: would I keep my appointment with that Minnesota bastion of…read moremedical diagnostics (you know the one--the name is synonymous with the best medical care available)? Or would I choose the leap of faith that led me to The Kempinski Clinic? After months of investigation, I was exhausted with researching case studies, with reading every book I could find, with feeling certain that I was dying, with being told by neurologists that I was simply (1) fat, and (2) crazy. So in the end, it had come down to this choice: would I submit myself to another round of scans and tests in the interest of finding a definitive label for my illness, after which the doctors would still bombard my system with the same frightening drugs they were already recommending? Or would I be brave enough to open my mind to a different approach, a treatment which involved retraining my brain to compensate for my physical deficits and realigning my nutrition to support health instead of illness?
I won't tell you it was an easy decision: I was raised to believe that the MD degree was as close to God as it was possible to get, and that was a mindset hard to overcome. And yes, even though I'd read virtually everything there was to read about it and the efficacy of it was illustrated in those readings time and again, still the concept of neuroplasticity and brain training sounded to me a little bit like hoodoo. But here's the thing: I truly believed I was dying. I could not lift my arms to wash my own hair. The trip to my mailbox was a Herculean task. I was Googling wheelchair ramps and mechanized stair-climbing chairs. I was terrified. And I did not have enough time, money, or energy to seek both treatment options. I had to choose.
Obviously, because I am here, because you are reading this, you already know I chose the Kempinski approach. It was a difficult process, and the work was challenging, and it wasn't in any way either cheap or inexpensive (and yes, there is a difference). And it gave me my life back. And I will never be able to adequately express my gratitude for the choice I made and the priceless care I have received since.
Fast forward: one year after my initial round of treatment, I was still a new person. I was no longer nutritionally and metabolically bankrupt. I had fully regained my balance and my energy and my health and my intellect. Gone was the nausea, the headache, the crippling feeling of brain fog that, for a person who prided herself on her intelligence, was perhaps the most debilitating symptom of all. I actually laughed one day when I stumbled across my long-ago Google search for an automated staircase chair.
Then...something happened. It was random, it was a fluke, it was a simple errant movement that once again triggered the crippling vertigo. I hadn't anticipated it, I didn't see it coming. It just happened. And I panicked.
Within a month the neurological symptoms had returned with a vengeance, and once again I was terrified. But here's the important part of this lesson: thanks to the year I had just spent under Dr. K's guidance, I was now stronger than I had been before. I was nutritionally sound. My blood chemistry and gut health was balanced and working in my favor, not against me. And so, when I returned to the clinic expecting the worst, what I got instead was the best: not the start-from-square-one course of treatment I had been expecting, but instead a fine-tuning of my already competent system. Within the week I felt myself again, strong and repaired and ready to take on anything life threw at me.
I am not in any way a religious person, and yet I know this one thing for sure: all it takes to make yourself well is knowledge, and willingness, and some pretty hard work, and a leap of faith. Whatever faith you happen to have will work just fine.
Just leap.
